Nigerians are among the most fashion-conscious people in the world. Maybe this is because they are so individualistic. Walk down any Nigerian street and you will see an amazing diversity of clothes styles, ranging from trendy modern clothes to a variety of traditional Nigerian dress. Men in flowing agbadas and women in beautiful lace mingle with other people wearing a wide variety of other traditional clothing.
Clothes are made from many different materials. These days some of them are made of man-made (synthetic) fibres. Perhabs the best examples of man-made fibres are nylon and polyester. These are made from chemicals, usually taken from coal or oil.
However, the most commonest material used for clothes is cotton. People wore clothes made from cotton as long as five thousand years ago - and cotton is still the most popular form of clothing today.
Cotton has many advantages: it is cheap, it is easy to spin into long thread, and it does not have to go through complicated manufacturing processes. It can be washed very easily and it is strong - much stronger than wool, for example.
The material comes from the cotton plant. After it has flowered, the seed pod, known as a boll, remains unopened while the seeds are growing. When the boll is ripe, it opens. The slippery black seeds are protected by cotton fibres about 2cm long.
For many years it was difficult to separate the fibres from the seeds. This job had to be done by hand, and it might take a person a whole day to remove the seeds from half a kilo of cotton.
In 1793, over two hundred years ago, an inventor named Eli Whitney invented a machine which could separate the seeds from the cotton much faster. It was called a cotton engine, or cotton gin, for short.
It worked like this: the cotton was put into the top of the machine. A handle was used to turn a wooden cylinder inside. On the outside of the cylinder there where rows of sharp metal teeth. As the cylinder turned, the teeth passed through narrow slots, pulling the cotton fibres through. The seeds were too large to go through the slots, and fell down into a container below. One person operating this machine could produce as much cotton in a day as 50 to 60 workers doing it by hand.
Cotton is grown in many parts of the world. The biggest producer of cotton in Africa is Sudan, but the most important West Africa cotton-producing area is parts of northern Nigeria, extending from Kaura Namoda south-eastwards through Zaria towards the Jos Plateau. Here, the rainfall is sufficient to permit the cultivation of cotton without irrigation.
The crop has several advantages: it is a cash crop, it offers employment, and it can provide cotton for Nigeria's textile factories. It also has several useful by-products, such as feed for livestock and oil.
IMAGE SOURCE:https://pixabay.com
References: Junior English Project For Secondary Schools